"Highly intelligent and educated half-wit" Julia goes on a holiday to Venice where she's accused of murder. Her friends back home in London, mainly barristers, take it upon themselves to solve the crime and prove Julia's innocence. It is narrated by Hilary Tamar, Oxford don of unspecified gender, and told largely although not exclusively through Julia's letters to her friends and their commentary on such. Very witty and funny, full of intelligent and only slightly eccentric people, the series about Professor Tamar is excellent.

Whilst on a trip to the sunny Channel Islands to find the heir to a lucrative tax law case, young barrister Michael Cantrip finds himself in over his head. Peculiar things begin to occur on the mysterious and isolated islands with something - or somebody — bumping off members of his legal team. With the help of his mentor, amateur investigator Hilary Tamar, Cantrip, must find a safe passage back to the Lincoln's Inn Chambers.

This is the 4th and last Hilary Tamar mystery novel by Sarah Caudwell, who died in 2000. Written in first person by Professor Tamar and including a series of letters by different characters, the story is told of a financial tax mess and a series of strange deaths. Professor Tamar seems to think there is a connection, but is there? Even though she wrote only four novels, her death was a profound loss, not only in itself but also in that it deprives us forever of learning more of Julia, Selina, Ragwort, Cantrip, Timothy and the eternally mysterious and genderless Professor Hilary Tamar. The book itself? Lovely, cosy, funny, clever, erudite, and ultimately deeply satisfying.

Professor Hilary Tamar's young Chancery barrister friends have finished an inheritance case when one of the minor beneficiaries turns up dead. It's assumed to be suicide, and as she wasn't the heiress nobody cares, but when the heiress is involved in an sailing accident in Greece, Hilary realises these were not accidents. In the course of investigation Selena and Julia are being invited upon false pretences to what turns out to be an orgy… But the combined wits and wit of our little group carry the day.

When her personal copy of the current Finance Act is found a few metres away from a body, young barrister Julia Larwood finds herself caught up in a complex fight against the Inland Revenue. Set to have a vacation away from her home life and the tax man, Julia takes a trip with her art-loving boyfriend. However, all is not what it seems. Could he in fact be an employee of the establishment she has been trying to escape from? And how did her romantic luxurious holiday end in murder?

This the third in the Hilary Tamar series, Oxford don who solves the cases brought to the professor's attention by the group of friends who work as lawyers in New Square, London. In this one, Cantrip has gone off to the Channel Islands on a tax-law case, and is indulging his love of telex machines by sending plenty back home. It's through these that Hilary and the others gain enough information to solve a mystery after a companion of Cantrips is killed.